A seasonal or soul-need ritual to flow with the essential energies of the summer sun: growth, movement, sensuality, creativity, delight.
From May 1 to beginning of August, I will be Walking the Ways of the Summer Light with Wisdom Wanders, Pilgrimage Prompts, blog posts, and special offerings from my Tarot practice. You can join in by following along on my blog, purchasing the overview guide, or joining me in some of the seasonal activities.
Why This Focus? (From the Overview Guide)
The sun rules the summer season and like the plants we humans respond to its exuberant invitations: reach for the light; grow to new heights; express your self and your delight; sing, dance, travel, paint (or what ever form your creativity takes); let your body love another or the earth upon which we walk. The explosive sun also invites us to release our anger, rise up against injustice, and shake off our constraints.
If we take up the summer sun’s invitations, we can move beyond our current boundaries of body, mind, and spirit. While winter is the season for change through inner work, the summer gets us out and walking the ways for growth.
In the Celtic calendar, summer begins with the festival of Beltane at the start of May in the Northern Hemisphere and November in the Southern. Celtic teacher Caitlín Matthews introduces us to the season in her Celtic Book of Days:
Beltane celebrates the bright half of the year and was warmly welcomed for it was the official beginning of summer when the over-wintered animals could be driven out into wider pasturing, and when scattered households would meet together and travel forth. … The festival, whose name means the ‘the fires of Bel’ is named after the Beli or Belenus, the shinning one, an archaic god for whom no legend remains. Several inscriptions remain to the Romano-Celtic Apollo Belenus, testifying to the solar and healing qualities of the original god.
Everything is in movement. You, too, are invited to move as we flow from spring into summer. Walking the Ways of the Summer Light, aligns with this energy of movement and offers you ways to cultivate the sun’s invitations of growth, movement, sensuality, creativity, and delight.
Flow of the Seasonal Ritual
The hinge of this ritual observance is the Summer Solstice on Monday, June 20. To move toward this time of greatest light in the Northern Hemisphere, we will be walking weekly guided by elemental themes of first earth, then air, water, and, finally fire. I call these walks, Wisdom Wanders, and they are designed to loosen us from our usual modes and roles so we can listen, see, and feel in news ways. We will be seeking the questions that ignite our desires, serve our growth, inspire transformation (rather than the answers). There will be weekly blog posts and those local to the Connecticut River Valley can join for weekly Wisdom Wanders at a wildlife sancutary.
We will move out from the Solstice focused on a central question. This question will guide our travel through the month of July. We are invited to make a pilgrimage to a sacred place to seek the answer to our questions. Weekly blog posts will support pilgrimage themes and there will be a circle sharing session at the start of August.
Ritual Tools
Our own bodies will be our greatest ritual tools as we move through the summer landscape.
We will, of course, be aided by our favorite Tarot decks and oracles. The Gaian, Minoan, and Shining Tribe Tarots along with the Oracle of Initiation will be my main inspirations for prompts and blog posts.
You will be invited to create a memento or document in some way your Wisdom Wanders and Pilgrimage. Your favorite creativity tools (pens, paints, cameras, ect.) can be part of your traveling ritual tool kit.
Schedule
Wisdom Wander Posts:
Urban Wisdom Wander in NYC – POSTPONED
Wisdom Wander for Writers on Sunday, June 12th.
Pilgrimage Posts:
- June 27th – Departure from the Threshold
- July 5th – Journey
- July 11th –Center
- July 18th – Return